


first born; first place

by seraf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Anxiety, Awkward Boners, Awkward Flirting, Bad Parent Chuck Shurley, Big Brothers, Child Abandonment, Chuck Shurley's A+ Parenting, Crying, Depression, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Everything is a Disaster, F/M, False Accusations, Flirting, High School, Hoo Boy Settle In This Is Going To Be An Adventure For Us All, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, In the most typical teenage highschool way, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Michael (Supernatural) Needs a Hug, Multi, My feelings on the man are pretty clear, Neglect Actually but i'm not sure there's a tag for that, Oldest Child Syndrome, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Rebellion, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Spongebob Voice: The Gang's All Here, Suicide Attempt, Teenage Drama, Trans Character, Trans Sam Winchester, Unconventional Relationship, big brother complex, high expectations, lucifer and michael aren't related, macho bullshit, projecting maybe a little bit on the part of the author
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 10:31:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13098222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf
Summary: Michael is sixteen years old and doing fine. ( Well. He /isn't/, per se, but it looks like he is, and that's all that matters. ) He's getting good grades, he's one of the captains of the crew ( rowing ) team, he's in all AP classes - what could possibly go wrong? Except, of course, the consideration that he's only human, and humans have /limits/.I haven't seen many other people cover how hard it can be to deal with high expectations, especially if you're the oldest, and a lot of the problems that come with it. I'm HOPING to update semi-regularly, so bear with me.( Lucifer/Michael and Michael/Dean will both be present, in a sort of polyamory V: I don't THINK there will be Lucifer/Dean, but we'll see. )





	first born; first place

The morning crept up on Michael, the early dawn sun shining across the keys of his computer and making him squint, looking at the time with an eventual sigh; too late to go back to sleep like he had been telling himself he would do for hours now, but too early to actually  _ do  _ anything. Exhausted, he rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm, white sparks swimming in his vision for a few seconds, refusing to dissipate when he blinked, blearily. He hoped the coffee machine booted up quickly this morning. 

 

Quietly, he made his way downstairs, folding his laptop shut and carrying it under one arm. His steps are practiced and careful, knowing exactly where the parts of the stairs were to step on so as not to creak. If he woke Gabriel up at - he glanced once at the clock in the hallway - 4:45 in the morning, he’s not so sure  _ he  _ would wake up the next day. Threats along that line had never really been  _ uncommon.  _ He presses a hand to the top of the coffee machine as he boots it up, muffling the noise upon starting, and sits down at the kitchen table with a sigh, opening up his laptop again with a grim resolve. 

 

Though he wasn’t sure how much it would actually help. Advanced Calculus and AP Biology notes swam before his eyes, turning to gibberish before him, and there was only so much he could remember about the semipermeability of different organelles before his brain refused to take in anything else. His grades right now were  _ good,  _ but he was clinging on by the skin of his teeth. The better he seemed to do, the more that was asked of him, and like the good son he was, he would do his best to step up. 

 

( Though it was getting harder and harder, these days. He remembered with a wince forcing himself to school during a nasty bout of the flu, just because he couldn’t  _ afford  _ to miss a day: he was just able to keep up with the hours of homework as is, without having to play catch-up. He’d spent three days in a fevered haze, taking notes he barely remembered writing down and running to the bathroom between classes to kneel over the toilet. )

 

He opens up his online notecards and begins testing himself, mouthing answers along as he reads and re-reads. 

 

The coffee machine beeps once, quietly, to announce that it’s finished brewing, and with a sigh of relief, Michael lifts out the pot, considering getting a mug for a second before looking at the time again, realizing no one was awake to judge him, and sitting back down to work with the pot beside him, taking a swig directly from it. 

 

( He had joked to Gabriel once recently that his newest biology project was seeing if you could substitute caffeine for both food and sleep, and it wasn’t… that far from the truth. With his extracurriculars, and the way his father monitored his weight sometimes, he missed a lot of meals, and, like today, there were a lot of times he’d stay up until the morning finishing homework or studying. )

 

Objectively, he  _ knew  _ it wasn’t healthy. But you did what you had to do, in the end - he was smart, yes, but not prodigally so. And yet the expectations he was held to demanded that he be. 

 

( It never came easily to him; not like Lucifer, one of his oldest . . . friends? Enemies? It changed from year to year. Lucifer could miss  _ weeks  _ of class or mouth off to the teacher and miss the eventual detention and turn in homework three days late and somehow he  _ still  _ got straight As. Michael envied him, because Lucifer just . . . didn’t  _ care.  _ The closest thing he had to an afterschool activity was smoking on top of the metal storage compartments in the back of the school. )

 

He was trying so hard his hands shook when they were left empty, and whenever he sat in one of the comfortable library chairs, his entire body  _ screamed  _ at him to go to sleep. Last month had found him taking caffeine pills with water straight from the boys’ bathroom sink, just out of sheer necessity. 

 

( Break wasn’t much better. He needed to be  _ active,  _ needed to look for colleges and keep studying and  _ you’ve done nothing all day Michael this is getting out of hand come on you need to DO something  _ )

 

His hand suddenly burned when he brushed his knuckle against something, and he jerked upright, realizing he had been starting to drift off into thought, and had cracked his knuckle against the side of the coffee pot. He looked almost  _ imploringly  _ at the clock, as if by doing that, he could make the minutes tick back long enough for him to get in a few hours of sleep, at least, rather than pulling his . . . third? All-nighter this week.

 

Much to no-one’s surprise, time didn’t suddenly bend to his will, and he sighed, trying to focus on his work. 

 

By the time Gabriel finally woke up, the sun was higher in the clear sky, and Michael was making his way through his second pot of coffee, this time actually using a mug with the thought in mind that his brother would wake up soon. He raised an eyebrow at the clothes Gabriel was wearing: bright blue pajama pants, mismatched socks, and a Star Wars t-shirt Michael was at least 90% sure was  _ his.  _

 

“You planning on changing before school?”

 

“Nope.” Gabriel said, popping the ‘p’ and settling down at the table, helping himself to a mug of hot coffee, and adding enough sugar that Michael’s heart clenched once in empathy, and he could hear  _ crunching  _ when Gabriel took a sip. He shuddered - just the thought of that gave him chest pains. Gabriel noticed his expression, grinned, and staring him right in the eyes, put another liberal spoonful of sugar into his drink. 

 

Michael sighed. It seemed like it was going to be a long day. 

**Author's Note:**

> Short, I know, but I literally banged this out at 3 am. I'm going to be stuck in a cabin for three days soon, so this might get a lot of updates to come. Thanks for any comments or input!


End file.
